VIMALA R. THAMPI Vs. K.P. HASHIM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A landlady, whose only building is in the possession of a tenant, has been trying for nearly a decade now to get back her building for her residential purposes. When the oral request made by her and the notice sent through her lawyer were all unheeded, she had filed an application before the Rent Control Court in 1677 for eviction of the tenant on different grounds under the Buildings (Lease & Rent Control) Act (for short 'the Act').

(2.) Though the Rent Control Court had dismissed her application, the Appellate Authority had found favour with the ground under S.11(3) of the Act and ordered eviction. But the District Court, in revision, has reversed the order and hence the landlord has come up to this court invoking the powers under S.115 of the Code of Civil Procedure. If is (fairly conceded that no reference to the other grounds for eviction need be made, because the landlord will win or lose this case on the ground under S.11(3) alone.

(3.) Some more facts have to be stated. The landlord in her petition has stated that this building is the only building belonging to her in this world, and even her husband has no building of his own and that she and her husband are residing now at Trivandrum in a rented building and her husband expects a transfer to a place in the suburbs of Ernakulam, and whether the transfer materialises or not, she wants to reside in her own building with her son, (who was then a student) and that she has been pressing the tenant to vacate the building to enable her to occupy it and the tenant has agreed to vacate it, but he has been delaying it. When the tenant expressed his refusal to vacate, in answer to her notice sent through the lawyer, she had filed the petition claiming that she bona fide requires the building for her own occupation. The tenant, in his counter, has repudiated this claim of the landlord which he has characterised as the consequence of his disinclination to agree for an exorbitant enhancement of the rent demanded by the landlord. Thus the tenant questions the bona fides of the landlord's claim.